If, Therefore, We Except The
Eighteen Marine, The One Fresh-Water, And One Land-Shell,
Which Have Apparently Come Here
As colonists from the
central islands of the Pacific, and likewise the one distinct
Pacific species of the Galapageian group
Of finches, we see
that this archipelago, though standing in the Pacific Ocean,
is zoologically part of America.
If this character were owing merely to immigrants from
America, there would be little remarkable in it; but we see
that a vast majority of all the land animals, and that more
than half of the flowering plants, are aboriginal productions
It was most striking to be surrounded by new birds, new
reptiles, new shells, new insects, new plants, and yet by
innumerable trifling details of structure, and even by the tones
of voice and plumage of the birds, to have the temperate plains
of Patagonia, or rather the hot dry deserts of Northern Chile,
vividly brought before my eyes. Why, on these small points
of land, which within a late geological period must have
been covered by the ocean, which are formed by basaltic lava,
and therefore differ in geological character from the American
continent, and which are placed under a peculiar climate,
- why were their aboriginal inhabitants, associated, I may
add, in different proportions both in kind and number from
those on the continent, and therefore acting on each other
in a different manner - why were they created on American
types of organization? It is probable that the islands of the
Cape de Verd group resemble, in all their physical conditions,
far more closely the Galapagos Islands, than these latter
physically resemble the coast of America, yet the aboriginal
inhabitants of the two groups are totally unlike; those of the
Cape de Verd Islands bearing the impress of Africa, as
the inhabitants of the Galapagos Archipelago are stamped
with that of America.
I have not as yet noticed by far the most remarkable feature
in the natural history of this archipelago; it is, that
the different islands to a considerable extent are inhabited by
a different set of beings. My attention was first called to
this fact by the Vice-Governor, Mr. Lawson, declaring that
the tortoises differed from the different islands, and that he
could with certainty tell from which island any one was
brought. I did not for some time pay sufficient attention
to this statement, and I had already partially mingled together
the collections from two of the islands. I never
dreamed that islands, about 50 or 60 miles apart, and most of
them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same
rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearly
equal height, would have been differently tenanted; but we
shall soon see that this is the case. It is the fate of most
voyagers, no sooner to discover what is most interesting in
any locality, than they are hurried from it; but I ought,
perhaps, to be thankful that I obtained sufficient materials to
establish this most remarkable fact in the distribution of
organic beings.
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